Beatles News

Paul McCartney’s 1967 Lamborghini 400 GT 2+2 is one in a number of celebrity cars that will be sold at Bonham’s upcoming Goodwood Members’ Meeting auction.

The Lamborghini was purchased by McCartney at the height of The Beatles’ success and was owned by him while they recorded Yellow Submarine and worked on the animated film of the same name. The car also appeared in ‘Anthology of The Beatles‘ – a 1996 BBC TV series focused around the band. This example, which features a 320 hp 4.0-liter V12, was purchased new by McCartney in February of 1968. It has had just four owners from new, with the most recent acquiring it back in 2011. It has been stored in a climate-controlled environment at Lamborghini Hong Kong for much of that time.

THE widow of George Harrison has agreed to support the creation of a memorial garden in Henley.

Mayor Kellie Hinton wrote to Olivia Harrison to see if she would back the idea and her husband’s charity confirmed she was in favour.

The town council will now work with Mrs Harrison and the Material World Foundation to find a suitable location.

Plans for a memorial in the town have been mooted for years. Mrs Harrison was against plans for a statue to the former Beatle, who lived at Friar Park. Councillor Hinton said: “We were only comfortable doing something if Olivia was going to support us.

“We know from previous discussions that she did not want anything near the house. We looked at locations in Mill and Marsh Meadows, which are tranquil and by the river. There were other areas we looked at which could be suitable.”

The Mayor met with representatives of the foundation in October, when they discussed the possibility of a garden. Cllr Hinton said: “We had a 45-minute meeting and went over some of the possible locations, which they could look at in their own time. On the same day we had a message saying they wanted to do it.

Shots of The Beatles’ first US concerts are expected to sell for £250,000 ($347,000) at auction. Mike Mitchell, 18 at the time, snapped hundreds of never-before-seen photographs of the band’s performances at the Washington Coliseum and the Baltimore Civic Centre in 1964. The negatives, taken only with ambient light as Mitchell had no flash, have sat for decades in his basement.

The day after The Beatles’ Cardiff show, manager Brian Epstein and the bandmates met with Walter Shenson, the producer who brought them to the big screen in A Hard Day’s Night and Help!

While the meeting was certainly less climactic than the previous evening’s concert, the day’s events held great portents nonetheless. Brian had arranged the meeting so that Walter could pitch a third feature film to the group. This time, the deal involved another property for United Artists titled A Talent for Loving.

Based on Richard Condon’s novel of the same name, A Talent for Loving would depict the four lads from Liverpool transplanted into an 1870s-era western as pioneering frontiersmen. But for the first time, the Beatles weren’t having it, voting unanimously – all for one and one for all, as was their practice – to reject Shenson’s gambit outright.

You might only know the Beatles as John, Paul, George and Ringo, but before there was a Starr, there was a Best. Often called the fifth Beatle, Pete Best was a member of the Fab Four just when Beatlemania was becoming a thing between 1960 and 1962.

Once the band -- with the help of manager Brian Epstein -- decided to replace Best with Starr, Beatles fans were outraged, chanting, "Pete forever, Ringo never!" And in their defense, Best is definitely still the best-looking out of the mop-top crew.

So, what's he up to now? On March 30-31, he and his brother Roag Best will be performing, answering questions and signing autographs at Queen Bee's (3925 Ohio Street) for the San Diego Beatles Fair.

The Liverpudlian who put the Beatles in suits, landed them a record deal with Parlophone, and brought to them to “The Ed Sullivan Show” is getting the biopic treatment from Bravo. Bravo is developing a limited series based on the life of Brian Epstein, the Beatles manager who helped steer them to “the toppermost of the poppermost” from the early 1960s until his death of a drug overdose in August 1967 at the age of 32.

Produced by Universal Cable Productions and Sonar Entertainment, the project is based on “The Fifth Beatle: The Brian Epstein Story,” the Dark Horse Comics graphic novel penned by Vivek J. Tiwary with art by Andrew C. Robinson and Kyle Baker. Tiwary will pen the series adaptation and serve as executive producer along with Leopoldo Gout. Bravo said the project has secured access to the Lennon-McCartney song catalog for use in the series.

Epstein is an enigmatic figure in the history of the legendary band. He struggled with internal and external demons and discrimination as a Jewish, closeted gay man living at a time when homosexuality was a felony in Britain.

George Harrison is today best remembered as the spiritual Beatle, but when he wrote "Blue Jay Way,” he was still helping invent rock star protocol. The Beatles already formed rock music from the Cavern they were carved in, and Harrison lived the lifestyle to its fullest. He was single the longest, married a model – perennial musical muse Pattie Boyd, rented rich people’s houses in the Hollywood Hills and went slumming in Haight-Ashbury. He was the youngest Beatle, born on Feb. 25, 1943. For what would have been Harrison’s 75th birthday, the band’s official Vevo YouTube site dropped the music video for “Blue Jay Way.” The clip is an excerpt of The Beatles' 1967 television film Magical Mystery Tour.

The Beatles members forewent a journey of fame and fortune during their lives, but not without a struggle.

Visiting Scholar Walter Everett, Professor of Music Theory from the University of Michigan, gave a presentation March 6 about unfolding the psychology and success of the fab-four. Katie Kapurch, assistant professor of English, invited Everett to speak at Texas State. She met Everett at a Beatles conference at Penn State in 2014. She said after he read one of her publications, they decided to collaborate because they shared similar interests related to the representation of sex, sexuality and gender in pop culture.

Kapurch said they have contracted with Bloomsbury for a book with the working title, “Sex and Gender in Rock and Pop from the Beatles to Beyoncé”. The free co-sponsored event featured a presentation that delved into the composition of the 1967 single “Strawberry Fields Forever”. Everett has published an acclaimed two-volume book “The Beatles as Musicians” and stands at the forefront of scholarly research on The Beatles.